Major French bank automates project approval process workflow with RunMyProcess

Challenge

The IT department of a major French bank monitors and approves the IT budgets of various overseas subsidiaries. The existing approval process was complicated and mainly manual. A new project approval workflow was developed. It involved an eight-step process covering branches, IT teams and headquarters, and requiring the exchange of documents. All of these factors made it difficult to collect and consolidate data easily.

Solution

The IT department decided to create and deploy an application using RunMyProcess. It would be browser-based so that no local installations would be required. The application manages the entire project request and approval process, along with data consolidation and cost tracking.
The existing Excel spreadsheet that used to be sent by email was converted into a web form. Local entities input their requests using the form. Documents are attached and uploaded automatically to a Google Docs folder and shared with the appropriate people. Google Docs manages the document versions.

The approval process was improved. Emails are sent to approvers indicating that action is required. Approvers are defined using profiles. Requests are assigned a unique ID and added to a Google Docs spreadsheet. A dashboard was created to give managers an overview of the status of the IT budget. It is driven by the data in the Google Docs spreadsheet and includes charts and real-time data.

Benefits

Feedback from the users has been very positive. They find the new process simpler and more efficient, thanks most notably to the browser interface. The workflow took 20 working days to develop and one week to implement worldwide. It has significantly reduced the time it takes to approve projects and has eliminated errors caused by conflicting document versions. Due to the success, the bank is planning to extend the project to the rest of the company.

Highlights

Email authentication

Google Docs

Google Site Integration

Google Docs spreadsheet

Manual tasks

2-legged OAuth authentication

runMyProcess